


The Unwanted Adventures of the Traveling Dentist from Konoha

by GlowingFireflies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Comedy, Crack, Dentistry, Gen, How Do I Tag, One Shot, Or the lore, POV Outsider, Sorry if I got the timeline wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlowingFireflies/pseuds/GlowingFireflies
Summary: Rui really wished that shinobi wouldn’t always drag him into their messy political affairs or assume he cared about them when he really just wanted to fix people’s teeth. “Look, whatever you have planned—assassination, world domination, using some forbidden jutsu or whatever, I really don’t care and would rather not be dragged into it. It’s not my job to sort that stuff out, okay? And I’m not a spy of any sort if you’re wondering. I just clean teeth, it’s pretty straightforward.”
Relationships: Akatsuki & Original Character, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Hatake Kakashi, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Original Male Character(s), Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 18
Kudos: 76
Collections: why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	The Unwanted Adventures of the Traveling Dentist from Konoha

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I know literally nothing about dentistry.

Rui was not a man much interested in politics or whatever sort of overly violent nonsense seemed to go on in the ninja world, much to the disappointment of his parents. They had both been shinobi, and had always been off on rather troublesome missions, leaving him alone to go off and do pointlessly dangerous things that always seemed to lead to more pointlessly dangerous things. They had excitedly enrolled him at the academy as a child, full of hopes and dreams of him becoming a legendary ninja. The whole affair seemed pointless, as shinobi always just tried to clean up problems started by shinobi like them, and he couldn’t help but think that everything would be more logical and straightforward if they just didn’t exist to begin with. 

Nonetheless, he excelled in his studies, and was soon being sent on a B-rank mission with his genin team (times were different during the Third Great Ninja War, and genin were more likely to be sent on dangerous missions). On the mission they ended up battling four legendary shinobi, and each of them (including their jounin sensei) escaped their fights alive, earning quite the name for themselves. Rui returned from the battle with the reputation of having wounded one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, which earned him hearty congratulations and admiration throughout the village. His main personal takeaway from the battle, however, was that the ninja’s pointed teeth had been impressively shiny and white—clearly in Kirigakure, despite their notoriously corrupt government and inhumane schooling system, they had some impressively good dental care. 

And from then on it was all he could focus on—whenever he encountered an opponent from another village or sparred with another shinobi, he would be oddly fixated on their teeth throughout the entire fight. He was particularly skilled at taijutsu and close combat, giving him full view of their teeth whenever they spoke to him. It had the unintended side effect of making his opponents rather uncomfortable, especially when he started raising concerns about them potentially having gingivitis or inquired about whether or not they regularly chakra-flossed while they were trying to kill him. 

Unnerving your opponent had its pluses, though, sometimes catching them by surprise enough to give him the upper hand in the fight. His reputation as a skilled shinobi grew, allowing him to go on many important missions and to face enemy ninja from many different villages. After a while, however, he had earned a modest reputation for such comments, and he noticed that his opponents would carefully keep their mouths closed and remain silent throughout all of his fights.

Shinobi from Suna, he had observed, had very straight teeth but not particularly clean ones, indicating that perhaps they had very good orthodontists there. Shinobi from Kirigakure had the cleanest teeth of all, with shinobi from Iwagakure coming in at a close second. Konoha was by far the worst—through observations and surveys he gleaned that only 1 in 9 Konoha ninja regularly went to the dentist, and a shocking 4 out of 9 didn’t even seem to know what a dentist was. 

It was with a heavy heart that Rui approached his parents one day when he was nineteen to explain that their dreams of him becoming a legendary ninja simply would not come to pass.

“Mother, Father,” he said. “I know that you are both hoping I will continue to follow in your footsteps and master the arts of stealth, chakra, and combat. But I have found another passion. Now that the war is over, and shinobi are no longer in such high demand, I feel it is my destiny to master the art of dentistry. I must travel to each of the villages and learn the techniques of their most prominent dentists and orthodontists so that I can bring optimal oral hygiene to Konoha.”

His parents were both a bit teary-eyed at this pronouncement, but ultimately they loved their child and it would be a lie to say that they had not seen something like this coming. They wished their son luck and saw him off on his journey, which would span the course of many years and the tutelage of many experts in tooth-cleansing chakra techniques. 

Rui was relieved to finally be following his passion and to be free of the endless drama that had haunted his life as a shinobi. He felt at peace when he was providing dental care, regardless of who it was for, and as he traveled throughout the various villages and the lands between, gaining knowledge, he earned a new reputation as a kind traveler who was willing to help out anyone with their tooth-related concerns regardless of where they were from or what sort of reputation preceded them. His aversion to any “nonsensical ninja drama,” as he called it kept him uninvolved enough to earn the trust of everyone from villagers to rulers to missing-nin. 

It was in this way that he learned that Hanzo of the Salamander’s intimidating mask primarily served to cover up the wide gap in his front teeth that he was rather ashamed of, that Sasori of the Red Sand insisted on regular dental appointments for each of his human puppets, which Rui would have been disturbed by if he weren’t making a significant amount of money off of it, and that Samehada was prone to getting cavities after consuming large amounts of chakra. Also, the teeth of the mouth on Deidara’s hand did not take kindly to having to regularly chew explosive clay. This did not seem to have any effect on Deidara’s behavior no matter how many times Rui explained it, and finally resulted in him nearly getting himself blown up when he suggested that perhaps clean teeth were actually the truest form of art.

It was a while after that alarmingly dangerous (and far too dramatic) encounter that Rui felt comfortable venturing back to the Akatsuki hideout, and by this time it seemed that nearly all of its members had been taken out, which was a pity since they had been some of his most loyal customers even if they did have some rather unnerving qualities about them. One of the few left was the strange fellow in the kind of swirly orange mask who had once gone by the name Tobi. Based on the way he was addressed by Kisame and the rumors that Rui had heard surrounding him, this man was the legendary Uchiha Madara who had been present at the founding of Konoha.

“Listen,” said Madara, sounding surprisingly kind of nervous. “I don’t particularly like dentists and I never have. This is just a one-time thing, and I’ll need a guarantee that anything you—uh, learn about me, is going to remain confidential.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rui with a reassuring smile. “I don’t like getting involved in shinobi affairs so I never tell secrets, and the fear of dentists is actually quite common among shinobi.”

“Be that as it may I need your word that you will not tell a word about me to Konoha or shinobi from any other villages. It would, uh, really mess up some of my plans if that were to happen.”

Rui really wished that shinobi wouldn’t always drag him into their messy political affairs or assume he cared about them when he really just wanted to fix people’s teeth. “Look, whatever you have planned—assassination, world domination, using some forbidden jutsu or whatever, I really don’t care and would rather not be dragged into it. It’s not my job to sort that stuff out, okay? And I’m not a spy of any sort if you’re wondering. I just clean teeth, it’s pretty straightforward.”

“Alright then,” said Madara, sounding mildly relieved. “If you do spill any of our secrets, though, I will personally see to it that you never clean another pair of teeth again. Or do anything else for that matter.” He then carefully took off his mask and laid it on a desk, turning to face Rui.

“Oh,” said Rui after a moment. “Weren’t you in my old class at the academy? What was your name again? Orio or something?”

“Obito,” the man answered with a sigh. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Oh yeah you were supposed to have died in battle, weren’t you? Our class had a very sad memorial service for you.”

Obito looked minorly pleased for a moment at hearing that—“Did Rin cry?” he asked. 

“Who’s Rin?” asked Rui.

“Never mind,” Obito muttered, his face returning to its sour expression. “You see, the difficulty is that half of my body was crushed under this boulder—when I was supposed to have died. And then someone—well, the real Madara—kind of healed me using the cells of Hashirama, which are very good at strengthening and healing people because he was very…powerful, I guess. Anyway, it made the right side of my teeth sort of functional, again, but they’ve been kind of weirdly-shaped ever since they got, you know, crushed. And my plans include me taking off this mask sometime very soon in a more public setting, and I was just wondering if there was a way of sort of—straightening them out or something? Just a little? I’m just kind of self-conscious about them and I think it would be better in the long-term for my plan—just for optics, you know—if my teeth looked a little bit better?”

“I don’t know, I think it’s sort of menacing. I mean it looks like you got into a pretty serious fight at some point and someone punched you in the face and crushed your teeth but you came out alive which is pretty cool, and given the fact that your plan seems to be moderately to extremely evil, not that I’m supposed to know about these things, I kind of think it would be good for the aesthetics? I mean, the entire right half of your body looks a bit weird so I don’t really see how patching up your teeth would help that much. They’re very clean as they are, you clearly take good care of them.”

Obito blushed. “Thanks,” he said, “I try. But really though, if you could just do something with chakra to straighten them out a little bit? I’ve thought of using a henge but trying to remember to keep it up all the time is just too much of a mental burden and I’m a bit forgetful.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” said Rui. He briefly wondered as he set to work whether or not he had some moral responsibility to let someone from one of the villages know that the person they thought was Madara was in fact his old classmate who had evidently been revived from his apparently deadly accident by the actual Madara, and that there seemed to be some great plan he was going to carry out soon, but that seemed a bit too much like ninja drama for him to want to get involved in it. He sighed, who knew dentistry overlapped so much with all of these complicated politics and ethics? He just wanted to fix people’s teeth in peace, why did they always want to bring this weird personal stuff into it?

After taking a look at Obito’s teeth he said, “Okay, there are some temporary fixes I can do with a bit of chakra but if you want them to straighten out in the long term you’ll probably need a specially-designed type of braces.”

“Braces?” said Obito, “Oh there’s no need for that. You see, in the world I’m going to create, I won’t need braces. I’ll have perfect teeth—”

“I really don’t want to hear about your crazy plans,” said Rui.

“Oh, okay,” said Obito, slightly miffed. 

Rui found out soon enough that Obito’s plan entailed a giant war, which made him slightly regret not having forewarned people—at the very least, it was pretty bad for business since people seemed preoccupied with much more serious injuries, and reanimated dead people didn’t seem particularly concerned about the state of their teeth. Somehow he managed to cobble out a living though, and by a few years after the war he returned to Konoha, convinced that he had learned all there was to learn about chakra dentistry. 

He set up shop in a relatively peaceful corner of the village, happy to be done with all of his travelling and unpleasant entanglements in ninja politics and content to give yearly dental check-ups to any civilians and ninja who saw the value in his underappreciated craft. And for several years he led a peaceful existence doing what he loved.

That was, until the day when he was violently accosted by a group of young adults, all of whom he recognized as having played some important role in the war. He tried to stay out of ninja matters as much as possible, but there were certain pieces of popular knowledge that couldn’t be escaped. He was pretty sure that the blond-haired kid was the jinchuriki war hero, the dark-haired one was the last Uchiha who had a rather chaotic and intimidating reputation, and the pink-haired girl he recognized as Tsunade’s old student. They were, of course, all famous for being rather powerful, and he really would have preferred to only hear about their powers in the abstract without having a rasengan and a chidori held inches away from his face and an infamously strong fist poised behind them. 

“W—what do you want from me?” he asked nervously, trying to remember any instance when his humble dentistry business could have angered three of the most famous people in the village. 

“If you do exactly as we say, you’ll escape unharmed,” said the pink-haired woman. 

“Don’t be so threatening, Sakura,” said the blond-haired guy—Naruto, that was his name. “We’re not actually going to hurt you,” he attempted to explain before he was cut off by the dark-haired man. 

“I plan to,” said the Uchiha. “If he doesn’t cooperate.”

“Sasuke, I thought you swore off being unnecessarily violent. Do I need to lecture you about friendship again?”

“The ends justify the means. It's an admittedly flawed ideology but this village clings to it like a crutch to justify all of its crimes so I don't see why we shouldn't make use of it on occasion,” replied Sasuke.

“Well I guess that is the in this case I have to say I'm on your side, Sasuke," said Sakura. "And Naruto, it would be a lot more convincing that you’re not going to hurt him if you weren’t holding a giant rasengan in his face.”

“Okay well I won’t seriously harm him, but I might lightly coerce him,” said Naruto.

Rui really didn’t want to find out what “lightly coerce” meant to the potential future hokage.

“I’m not even a shinobi anymore,” he sighed miserably. “I’m not going to put up a fight so you might as well just explain whatever it is that you want me to do.”

“You’re Kakashi-sensei’s dentist, right?” asked Sakura.

Rui’s eyes brightened up. “Yes, he’s one of my best clients! I once asked him if he would want to model for the new sign outside my office but he refused.” Rui sighed with residual disappointment as he remembered the look of utter horror on Kakashi’s face at the prospect. “In the end I got his friend Maito Gai to do it—interesting guy, very enthusiastic and with remarkably shiny teeth.”

“So…if Kakashi were to model for the sign…without his mask on…there wouldn’t be anything embarrassing about it?”

“Oh, I’m sure he would be embarrassed about it.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said in a low voice. “The next time Kakashi schedules a dental appointment, you are going to notify us of the date and time. When he arrives, you are going to leave the door unlocked. The windows will be closed to prevent any birds, wild animals, or flying projectiles from entering the room. You will send us some sort of signal—we can decide on it at a later date, when you are positioned so that whatever type of dental tools you use are inside his mouth and it would be ineffectual for him to try to put his mask on again. At this point we will come bursting into the room, and your future safety will be ensured.”

Rui gave a defeated sigh and nodded in acquiescence. It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do but go along with this insane and convoluted plan of theirs, which seemed to have very questionable motives. God, why were shinobi always threatening violence upon him and involving him in their disturbing and petty disputes—couldn’t they just leave him and his dentistry business in peace?

**Author's Note:**

> Let know if I should make a sequel or something, I'm not sure if I left it off at too much of a cliffhanger.


End file.
